


A Very Long and Serious Relationship

by poppunkwolf



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Drama, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Family, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Other, Romance, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-01 17:56:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15779154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poppunkwolf/pseuds/poppunkwolf
Summary: I am a 20 year old felon with no high school degree and a dirty old bug eight years older than me painted taxi yellow. I’m unemployed. If you’d like to have me as your strictly platonic date for Thanksgiving, but have me pretend to be in a very long or serious relationship with you, to torment your family, I’m game.I can do these things at your request:Openly hit on other female guests while you act like you don’t notice.Start instigative discussions about politics and/or religion.Propose to you in front of everyone.Pretend to be really drunk as the evening goes on...So really, Emma wrote the entire Craigslist ad as a self-deprecating joke so she could feel less like someone who had nowhere to go on Thanksgiving, and more like someone who hadsucceededat driving people away so well that she should getinvitedto do it.





	A Very Long and Serious Relationship

**Author's Note:**

> This story is based on [that infamous craigslist ad](http://www.mtv.com/news/2005092/dirtbag-boyfriend-thanksgiving-craiglist/). It's in an AU without the fairy tales. Emma is 20 and not related to Henry.

 

_I am a 20 year old felon with no high school degree and a dirty old bug eight years older than me painted taxi yellow. I’m unemployed. If you’d like to have me as your strictly platonic date for Thanksgiving, but have me pretend to be in a very long or serious relationship with you, to torment your family, I’m game._

_I can do these things at your request:_

_Openly hit on other female guests while you act like you don’t notice._

_Start instigative discussions about politics and/or religion._

_Propose to you in front of everyone._

_Pretend to be really drunk as the evening goes on..._

 

 

Emma liked to believe she was a pro now at finding exactly the type of employer that was never going to discover her record- namely, people too lazy to run a background check. But the fact that she had had to do it seven times in the two years since she had gotten out revealed the inherent flaw to this theory. They all eventually discovered what had happened, and even the most slacker bosses in the most laid-back establishments could not get past a _ridiculously_ high-value jewel heist.

“I’m very impressed that you pulled that off, and I’m surprised that you need the money considering the value of what you stole, and also I cannot let you anywhere near a customer or their money ever again,” Hopper had explained at the bar two nights ago. “I-I’ll have security escort you out,” he’d added apologetically, as the bar’s one security guard, Leroy, someone she’d previously dueted with on “A Whole New World” approached her sheepishly and walked her the entire seven feet between the bar counter and the door, as if on her way out she were going to try to grab a juke box or a bunch of napkins and make a run for it.

And the thing was, before this incident she had been relieved to know that she was scheduled all evening for this coming Thursday. Because it was a place to be, and an excuse for not having another, homier, place to be, and she’d get to commiserate with other people in the same situation. Getting time and a half was also a literal bonus. But now…

Well now it was the time to revisit certain resume skills:

Professional

Friendly

Hard working

Emma took a sip of her three buck chuck and wrote, “Causing suffering on holidays to foster families already set on sending me back.”

So really, she wrote the entire Craigslist ad as a self-deprecating joke so she could feel less like someone who had nowhere to go on Thanksgiving, and more like someone who had _succeeded_ at driving people away so well that she should get _invited_ to do it.

 

 

And now the conundrum. On the one hand, only a weirdo would even answer the ad she posted. Only someone who had perfectly plotted a murder and just needed a person to do it to, or at absolute best, someone with crazy boundary issues and probably the world’s shittiest family, one even she wouldn’t have wanted to be brought into growing up. She hadn’t even planned to answer the responses she got.

On the other hand, this girl named Starla… was maaaybe flirting?

“We wouldn’t have to stay that long. If you’re the absolute terror you claim to be, they’ll kick us out before they even serve their from-scratch homemade apple pie with apples grown in the garden, and we won’t have to so much as play a board game. And who knows… maybe we’ll have fun on our own after that if you're down.”

Emma tried not to sound enticed by the could-mean-anything suggestion in that last statement. “Your family sounds very wholesome.”

“They are. It’s insufferable. My mom is dating the mayor. They’re absolutely cloying together. They volunteer to clean parks. They register people to vote. And the mayor’s kid is a nightmare. Not because he’s poorly behaved, but because he’s basically a Stepford child.”

“So… they’re… fake, or?”

“I’ll let you decide. I don’t know what to call it but it rubs me the wrong way and I really wanna see how they react to having me bring you. And… I’m interested in meeting you.”

“I think this’ll be interesting too,” she decided, out loud, at that minute. She had a sense that the worst that could happen was more of the skeletons-in-the-closet variety. And being unemployed was just boring enough that this was preferable to sitting around alone at home day drinking and taking Buzzfeed quizzes on what kind of holiday spice she was. (She already knew it was cinnamon. Because it was bizarrely easy for people to overdose on her and never want to go near her again.)

 

 

Dawn was always a weird time to be sitting alone in a parking lot, let alone in anticipation of meeting a random internet person who was supposed to just show up and get in your car. But she’d told herself it seemed like it was going to be okay. It was going to be a perfectly fun, weird experience and if she ever made friends she’d have a story to tell them at parties.

And then it was not an okay experience because the person got in the car, turned to her, and said, “Hey, Emma.”

And her stomach felt like the time she went to Disney and got on the Tower of Terror, where they rose the passengers to the highest point in the entire park and just… dropped them.

“Oh my god. What are you doing here? Are you… are you _Starla_?”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I catfished you but as soon as I saw the reference to the car and it said ask for Emma, I had to know. I had to know if it was you.”

“Lily, what the hell? Why do you care that it’s me?”

“Because I’m sorry for what I did. And I felt like you deserved an apology.”

“You’re apologizing? For something you did? Amazing.”

“Those people, the camping people, they seemed nice. I don’t know if it would’ve worked out with them but I know it was my fault it didn’t. And I’m sorry.”

“It hadn’t worked out for fourteen years. I’m sure if you hadn’t screwed it up with them, I would’ve.”

Lily met her eyes. “Are you saying you forgive me?”

Fuck.

Was she forgiving her?

It was weird with Lily. She felt stupid for the pull she felt toward her. They had been friends so briefly, and at this point it was six years ago. But something in her had bloomed in that time before it all fell apart. She’d looked out at the lake, at the houses beyond, and then at the girl sitting beside her with a whole universe of possibility in her eyes, and she’d felt like she’d found someone she’d never let go. She hadn’t been good at being a street kid, but Lily had seemed like a gift from the universe. Someone whose very first act toward her had been to keep her safe.

And then the truth came. A rich man with a nice car and an entourage of police started talking about how _relieved_ he was to see her, how she had set off the _alarm_ in the _summer house_. And she realized Lily was not like her. She was a spoiled, privileged, bratty runaway. This bitch had a credit card and a father and a mansion. She was bored and she was lying.

Emma had never felt more alone, in the worse way possible, but time must equal personal development because now she wished Lily would fuck off and just. Stop. Trying. To find her. “Get out of my car.”

“I haven’t seen my parents since the last time I saw you.”

And there it was. The thing. The way Lily just… pulled her in. “What do you mean?”

“My parents basically disowned me over the robbery. They’ve refused to see me. I would call them and they’d be like, ‘Are you still alive?’ and I’d say, ‘Well, yeah,’ and they’d be like, ‘Okay,’ and hang up. I ran into a girl from Catholic school who thought I had gone to boarding school in Switzerland. They told people that. I’m sorry for what I did, Emma, but you have to realize my parents never loved me. I wasn’t faking anything. They were awful and they made me want to die inside. That’s why I ran away from them.”

And it wasn’t that the story was particularly sad. Objectively, she knew it was. But it wasn’t sadder than her own. Growing up in foster care, never getting adopted, never having a single adult she could trust, a single pillow she knew would be there the following night. It definitely wasn’t sadder than the stories of like, everyone she’d ever met in juvie. It wasn’t a big deal in the sea of horrible lives she knew people were living.

But it was Lily’s deal. And she cursed her heartstrings for pulling her in the direction of the girl she was resigning herself to somehow, despite everything, caring about.

“Well what are we even supposed to do now? Are we gonna go get drunk and pretend you didn’t make up a weird pretend mom we’re supposed to visit?”

Light dawned in Lily’s eyes. “Oh, no. I didn’t lie about that. She’s real. She’s my birth mom.”

Emma couldn’t resist the amazed feeling, the smile that instantly befell her cheeks. “Oh my god. What? How did you find her?”

“She found me. I wasn’t able to find her but she always knew where I was, or at least where I was supposed to be. Where she thought I was. She’s only seventeen years older than me. She said she always stayed away because she wanted me to have my best chance. And now she’s found me.”

“And she’s, what, like the worst?”

“No. She’s… not the worst. I met her three months ago. She’s nice. Her name is Mal. I’ve gone to see her every other weekend since then.”

“So what’s wrong?”

Lily rested her head against the seat, closed her eyes, and sighed deeply. “Okay. So this town, Storybrooke? Literally the cleanest, most Leave it to Beaverest place I’ve ever seen. And last time I was with her, she introduced me to her girlfriend she lives with, and the girlfriend’s son, and I finally realized. She has a life. She has a very ideal life with a very ideal girlfriend who has a very perfect kid who is a child and not a grown woman. And they have a favorite diner and a favorite way of making hot chocolate, and I could not have felt any more like a trashy reject street rat who was just like, awkwardly invading their family time.”

“It doesn’t necessarily sound like they think that about you.”

“They do.”

“How do you know.”

“I just do… there was an incident, okay? And I don’t want to explain it, but trust me, it taught me something about them. It taught me that if I told my mom about the bad things I’ve done, she would not forgive me. She would not want me around.”

“Oh my god, Lily. What did you do?”

“It’s embarrassing.”

“I met you when you caught me being the world’s worst shoplifter and you literally had to rescue me from an employee.”

Lily rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t that bad, but that’s the point. I’m not like any of them.”

 “And you haven’t told her what your life has really been like,” Emma realized.

 “I haven’t. I mean… you don’t even know the half of those things, and I trust you.” Lily, head leaning against the rest, looked her deep in the eyes and Emma couldn’t even understand how she got here but she was here, she was in again, and she wasn’t even mad anymore.

Lily continued. “This woman is nice. But she’s not my family. She doesn’t love me. She’s someone who got curious about a shameful mistake she made as a teenager, and now I know she regrets letting me into her life. I know you know what that feels like with a family. It’s better to get it over with.”

“To break up with them before they break up with you,” Emma said. “So… operation Apple Pie?”

“Is that what we’re calling our plan to ruin Thanksgiving?”

“If that’s what you want from me. I mean, honestly I love the idea of getting revenge on all the Brady Bunches out there that I tried so, so hard to impress as a kid. I so badly wanted them to love me. And now I’ll get to give them the hell they deserve.”

Lily smiled mischievously as she scrolled through her phone and then began to play “Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett. “We’re gonna need the right playlist if we’re gonna plan this out. I knew I could count on you, Emma. It’s like we can get back at everyone who thought they were better than us.”

Emma smirked. “I don't know how you pull me into these situations, but I did ask for this. And one thing I can give you is that you were always fun to wreak havoc with.”


End file.
